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Article published In:
Journal of Language and Politics
Vol. 18:3 (2019) ► pp.393–419

Epistemic stancetaking and speaker objectification in a spatio-cognitive discourse world

A critical contrastive analysis of political discourse

ORCID logo | University of Cambridge
This paper seeks to apply a cognitive-linguistic approach to critical discourse studies in an investigation of epistemic stancetaking and types of inter/subjectivity of the speaker in political discourse. More specifically, the paper presents an analysis of responses by three different politicians, i.e. John Kerry, Bashar al-Assad and Vladimir Putin, to the chemical weapons attack in Syria in August 2013. By incorporating cognitive-linguistic theories in a critical investigation of language, I address diverging representations of the same event and their discursive functions in representing underlying ideologies and motifs of the respective politicians. Specifically, I propose a more nuanced incorporation of epistemic stance in a spatio-cognitive representation of discourse. My analysis shows that type of inter/subjectivity has bearing on the epistemic quality of a proposition. The more prominently a speaker construes him-/herself as evaluator of an event, the stronger his/her assertions become, which is equally visible in a discourse space model.
Keywords: cognitive linguistics, critical discourse studies, epistemic stance, inter/subjectivity, discourse space theory, Syrian civil war
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Theoretical and methodological framework: Epistemic stancetaking and speaker objectification in a discourse space model
    • 2.1Epistemic stancetaking and types of speaker objectification
    • 2.2Spatio-cognitive discourse worlds or discourse space theory
  • 3.Data: The 2013 chemical weapons attack in Syria
  • 4.Construing the chemical attack in Syria: A critical contrastive analysis
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 4 February 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/jlp.17038.ull
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2023. Can space be conceptualized in a different way in political discourse? An extended application of Discourse Space Theory. Discourse & Society 34:6 ► pp. 712 ff. DOI logo
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